If you grew up with Dragon Ball Z on American TV, you saw a show that had been heavily reworked: deaths turned into trips to "the next dimension", scenes trimmed or removed, a new score and a world champion called Hercule. Most of it came from the rules of 1990s children's television, and some of it came from the distributor rather than from Funimation itself. Here is what changed, series by series, and where to find the uncut version today.
Why Dragon Ball was edited
Akira Toriyama wrote the manga for the readers of Weekly Shōnen Jump, aiming at a slightly older audience than his previous hit, Dr. Slump. The early arcs are full of cheeky humor, mostly around Master Roshi, Oolong and Bulma, and from Dragon Ball Z onward the fights get bloodier and characters die regularly. American broadcasters, on the other hand, aired it in time slots aimed at kids. The result was a localization that changed dialogue, footage and music all at once.
The 1996 syndicated version
After abandoning its first dub of the original Dragon Ball halfway through a planned 26-episode season, Funimation licensed Dragon Ball Z and premiered it in syndication on September 13, 1996. The voices were recorded in Vancouver at Ocean Studios, and Saban Entertainment handled distribution. It was the most heavily edited English version of the series:
- references to death were sidestepped with phrases like "sent to the next dimension";
- violent and suggestive shots were trimmed, and some dialogue was rewritten to contradict what was on screen;
- Shunsuke Kikuchi's original music was replaced with a new score from Saban's in-house composers, including Shuki Levy;
- the first 67 episodes were squeezed into 53, with the last one ending halfway through original episode 67.
Funimation's CEO Gen Fukunaga often took the blame from fans, but he later explained that many cuts were demanded by Saban, which would not air certain material otherwise. That was the case, for example, with an episode dealing with orphans. The most famous example of rewritten dialogue: after a helicopter explodes, a character reassures viewers that he can see the passengers' parachutes.
Oddly enough, the same team produced a much more faithful product at the same time. The first three Dragon Ball Z movies, released on home video by Pioneer from 1998, were dubbed by Funimation with Ocean but left visually unedited, kept Kikuchi's music and followed scripts close to the Japanese original.
The most famous changes
The edits went well beyond a few cuts. These are the ones fans still quote:
| Original | Edited English version |
|---|---|
| Characters die | "Sent to the next dimension" |
| Mr. Satan | Hercule |
| Episodes 1-67 | 53 episodes |
| Shunsuke Kikuchi score | Saban score, then Bruce Faulconer |
| Graphic or suggestive shots | Trimmed or removed |
Mr. Satan became Hercule to avoid any reference to Satan, and the name stuck far beyond the anime: Viz's manga and the video games kept it until the English dubs of Kai and Super brought back the original. The full story of how names were chosen in Japanese, where most of them are puns, is in our page on names and puns.
Toonami and the Faulconer era
When Dragon Ball Z moved to Cartoon Network's Toonami block in 1998, it was so successful that the network ordered new episodes. Funimation resumed production without Saban, with a new Texas-based cast and a new score by Bruce Faulconer's team. Without Saban's requirements and with cable's looser rules, the new episodes were noticeably less censored.
Dragon Ball GT got the most radical treatment of all. When it aired on Cartoon Network from November 7, 2003, Funimation skipped the first 16 episodes, the lighthearted Black Star Dragon Ball arc, and replaced them with a single specially produced recap episode, to drop viewers straight into the action. The dub also had a new score by Mark Menza, new rap-style theme songs, and moved the story from five to ten years after Z.
Kai and the blue Mr. Popo
The next round of edits came with Dragon Ball Z Kai. Even in Japan, its original TV broadcast had already removed some blood and brief nudity. In the US, Nicktoons aired it from May 24, 2010, with further changes: a preview showed Bardock losing his blood and cheek scar, and Master Roshi's alcohol changing color. A separate cut was made for Toonzai, the Saturday morning block on The CW owned by 4Kids Entertainment. The most notorious edit there: Mr. Popo was tinted blue. 4Kids only programmed the block; the English dub of Kai was produced by Funimation.
Four years later, Kai aired uncut on Adult Swim's revived Toonami, and the DVD and Blu-ray releases only ever included the edits made in the original Japanese version.
Did you know? Ocean Studios also recorded an English dub of the first 98 episodes of Kai, with many of the original Vancouver voice actors back in their roles. It has never been publicly released.
Watching Dragon Ball uncut
The fixes started in 2005, when Funimation redubbed episodes 1-67 with its in-house cast, restoring the cut footage. The new version aired on Cartoon Network from June 14, 2005, branded as the "Ultimate Uncut Special Edition". Between 2009 and 2011 came the uncut "Dragon Box" sets in the original 4:3 format, and modern streaming releases of Kai, Super and Daima follow the Japanese originals. For the rest of the story, from Toonami's ratings records to Viz's censored manga, see Dragon Ball around the world.